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Forum:Amendments to Canon Policy
This forum was originally meant for the Administration Team of Halo Fanon, but I supposed we should also include the opinion of the community in order to reconcile the fact that Bungie is out of the game. As you might now, the current canon policy of Halo Fanon has been as such: The problem with our current policy is that Bungie is no longer part of the Halo Universe, and, as much as we love their work, we would have to change the order of canon to accommodate future canons, thus placing 343i as the primary source of official canon. Now, I will address the amendments that should be applied to the canon policy; ;Who's the top? *While I am aware that 343i would be the official word of all things canon and not Bungie after September 14, 2010, let us not forget that it is Bungie's products that made the universe of Halo as unique as it is. Due to this unique status, the canon policy would have to adopt similar policy as laid out in Wookiepedia, where the six films are the highest source of canon and all others are below the films. Consider this as a "creator's rights" to the franchise. ;Introducing Bungie-canon, Microsoft-canon and Fanon-canon *Bungie-canon consists of products made by Bungie, that is the Halo Trilogy and Halo: Reach. Microsoft-canon would include everything else ranging from novels, trailers to third-party reports. *Some may ask, what about the novels? Wouldn't they be part of Bungie-canon? *To simply put; no. As per above, the novels is a project headed by Microsoft Development Team (now known as 343i) since 2001. And yes, this includes even Staten's Contact Harvest novel. While Microsoft develops the novels using their assets, Bungie was only there to supervise and give suggestions to make the novels more appealing/true to the Halo Universe. In other words, Bungie was not directly involved in the writing of the novels; they only gave suggestions to improve the content. So, where would this put the novels in the canon hierarchy? Under Microsoft-canon, under Microsoft games. It should note that Halo Wars, despite having some content improvement suggestions from Bungie, is entirely 343i/Microsoft, thus making it part of Microsoft-canon. *So, what do this mean? Who's superior? Back to first issue, Bungie is deemed to have earned the "creator's right". This unique right allows them to be the superior source of canon for the entire 10 years of being in contract with Microsoft. This does not include products released by Bungie after September 14, 2010. This right only holds them being credible from 2001 to 2010. Microsoft would be the secondary source of canon, followed by third party reports ;What is Microsoft-canon exactly? *Microsoft-canon, also known as 343i-canon, is the continuity/expanded project of the Halo Universe. 343i, approved by Microsoft, would be the primary source under Microsoft-canon and anything released by them will be considered as official canon. Anything created by Microsoft and its affiliates would have been considered as being approved automatically by Bungie, thus making them canon. *Under Microsoft-canon, it would have a secondary canon hierarchy; the games would be superior, followed by the novels, other literatures, the marketing campaigns and other promotional items... in that exact order. Because Halo is essentially a game franchise, game titles would be the superior source of canon in each category. ;Whoa... Fanon-canon? *Fanon-canon is simply fixed errors made in official canon by members of the Halo Fanons. For example, the Falcon is actually a tilt-rotor vehicle and not a helicopter. Despite this, canon still designates it as the UH-144. Fanon-canon would correct this to UV-144. Fanon-canon is a very messy source of canon; it is not official and it changes as the Halo Universe expands and nothing is ever fixed. This form of canon some times ignore the hierarchy of canon, simply to fix the errors made in the Halo Universe. However, one should always be reminded that fanon-canon is no way of being fully superior over all other forms of official canon and that anything under fanon-canon can change at any time. If you don't fully understand the concept of fanon-canon, ignore it and simply focus on official canon. ;What about Marketing Campaigns? *The above quote should be sufficient to establish that Bungie had no time to be directly involved in the Marketing Campaigns. This would place them directly under Microsoft-canon. ;Is that it? *Yes for making amendments to Canon Policy. There's one final thing I would like to amend, see below. The four guidelines laid out in the Canon Policy is still workable and need no update. The only problem we have right now is who's superior and who's inferior. Hopefully, you had a nice read. ;Alternate Universe *More specifically, Alternate. In Halo Fan Fiction Wiki, we take pride of able to write fanon and make it work alongside canon. When a fanon contradicts an official canon source, authors would go in and fix their articles. This has always been the common practise in Halo Fan Fiction Wiki ever since the birth of the wiki. *The problem with Alternate template is that it discourages authors to fix their article to make them workable with official canon. It functions as a free-to-ignore-canon card. There is no limitations of the template; you can simply use it on any article that seems to have contradict canon, or on any article you find hardship of fixing. Let me illustrate several scenarios: **An article was NCF'ed because it contradicts an official canon. Add the template and you're free from future canon problems. **The author dislikes the way official party of the franchise presented the character/event/subject. Add the template and you can make them likeable to your taste. **An author is simply a Bungie-fan and dislikes 343i and Microsoft. Add the template and you can ignore everything (or omit most of what) 343i/Microsoft has released. *The above scenarios are common in Halo Fan Fiction Wiki nowadays and it's spreading rapidly throughout the community. I understand that most users do not like the direction of the Halo Universe under 343i/Microsoft, but that's how things are. *The alternate template has no ending to its implementation and presents as a fundamental problem to keeping things in canon. It's basically turning Halo Fan Fiction Wiki into fanfiction.net. Not everything on fanfiction.net is pleasant to read. Most of them is pretty much the typical and boring action-hero-macho-ism! *In short, the template presents itself as a form of floodgate, where there is no end to the application and that there is high potential of abuse. ;TL;DR Just look below... >.> :And we need to remove the use of Alternate template. References Comments Just in case someone brought up the Halo: Reach is not canon and FoR is superior... the events of Halo: Reach is Bungie-canon whereas events in FoR is Microsoft-canon. Events in FoR still took place, though the dates would need to shift around in order to make sense of the events.- 5əb'7aŋk(7alk) 18:31, October 31, 2010 (UTC) This is makes me laugh right here, because, while you can't remember the name, the RP was simply RP:What If?. On topic though, we obviously need some form of alternate universe policy, or otherwise more important things (like Halo 3: Ascension) will suddenly be unacceptable, and that just can't be stood for}} :LOMI: Halo 3: Ascension, being a story that was released long before the campaign of Halo 3 was revealed, would be an exceptional case as any changes made to the story without losing its appeal. I'm guessing it all depends on the uniqueness/foundation of the article; if the foundation of the article is minuscule and somewhat minor, the author should change the content to follow the official canon, but whereas the foundation of the article is major, such example would be Dragonclaw's Halo 3 story, then it would be of an exceptional case. This doesn't apply to community projects though. - 5əb'7aŋk(7alk) 21:01, October 31, 2010 (UTC) ::Oh, I should have mentioned that the use of the Alternate template would only cease to work on future articles. Current articles currently using them are the only exceptional subjects.- 5əb'7aŋk(7alk) 21:04, October 31, 2010 (UTC) :The thing is that there is no such limitations when you created the template, which makes it a problem. Perhaps construct a limitation section in the template? - 5əb'7aŋk(7alk) 21:01, October 31, 2010 (UTC) :To Matt256: as I said before and I stress this point once again to everyone, this thread only concerns with the canon hierarchy (that is, rearranging the hierarchy to show the most up-to-date canon pyramid/chain). Contradictions would be considered as "loopholes" as laid out in the guidelines of the Canon Policy. Because these contradictions are not definite canon, you can easily exploit this loophole until an official source confirms the info. :To Specops: the MAC argument has been resolved by this community some time ago. Sgt.johnson and the others had done the math and double-triple checked with multiple sources and run the calculations through some third party software. You can see the corrected-version here. The article was originally a carbon copy of the Halopedia article, but modified to represent the most up-to-date info.- 5əb'7aŋk(7alk) 19:47, November 1, 2010 (UTC) :The problem is that it's really hard to explain why it is the way it should be, the MAC strength argument that is. It is arguably the best example, but a difficult one to explain why. I also blame myself for the lack of recording the explanation process. It would have been certainly helpful if I had done so. Thus why I chose the Falcon designation argument; it is a simple argument that shows a minor error made by Bungie, and requires no extra research.- 5əb'7aŋk(7alk) 21:04, November 1, 2010 (UTC) We don't really need a vote. Judging from the comments right now, it's enough to say that the amendments is understood and approved by all. However, the issue with the Alternate template remains unresolved for now, so nothing is certain about that one. @Matt; You haven't mastered the art of bending... ;) - 5əb'7aŋk(7alk) 19:04, November 2, 2010 (UTC)